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11 comments

The video is very sweet indeed. However I feel that the title (of this post, not of the video) is misleading and incorrect. It’s not that “modesty makes you beautiful” but that you are already beautiful so you can be modest and it won’t detract. “Virtue” and “modesty” are not the same thing at all. I was put off by the post because of the title until after I saw the video itself.

There is a flaw in your argument. Intrinsic beauty from Torah perspective is not going to be in the physical realm. There is physical beauty, but that’s not the beauty that Torah values. Since we are physical creatures, Hashem created a standard against which we measure beauty in this world, and that is modesty. Modesty brings out beauty. Modesty is not a decoration over your beauty. Modesty is what creates beauty. Lack of modesty takes away from beauty. The title is not misleading. It is exactly what the Torah position would be. Avraham did not know what Sarah looked like until they crossed a body of water and he saw her reflection in the water. All those years they lived together, how was he attracted to her? The beauty was in the way she carried herself not the way she looked, and then happen to have also dressed modestly.

I’m going to show this to my daughter (17), she has been dressing modestly in a very large public high school. The sad part is the guys don’t mind but the girls do. She wore a long sleeve tissue tee under her dress for homecoming and some of the moms called to tell her that she “ruined” the dance! Thank you for sharing the video.

I”m echoing Tamar’s comment. The use of the word “virtue” and the lack of kipahot, and other subtle things lead me to think these guys are evangelicals. So I’ll be sending this to my evangelical friends. It is well done and the message is admirable.

I’ve seen this video posted a couple of times and I have to say, the arrogance of a boy thinking he gets to ascribe value to a girl based on how she dresses is appalling. Boys who think they get to judge a girl based on her dress are the same boys who think they are justified in calling a girl a whore if she dresses in a way that he considers immodest. Attention all girls: my daughters, my sister, my nieces- your value is not measured by what a boy thinks of you. You get to make choices for yourself and if you want to wear shorts and a tank top because you’re comfortable in that, then you go right ahead. Modesty is a matter of perspective and you don’t have to live your life based on the arbitrary barometer of others. You run like a girl, you fight like a girl, you work like a girl and you defy anyone who claims that any of those things are somehow diminished by your gender. And any boy/man who thinks he gets to belittle my daughters, my sister or my nieces based on something as superficial as clothing better pray to whatever god he believes in that he can run faster than this girl.

I realize this is all very well intentioned but I don’t think a video made by young men, about young women, is my idea of modesty or tzniut. I think it’s very important for Jewish girls and women to understand the tzniut is primarily about our relationship with our Creator, through and with our bodies. Of course there are social implications to how we behave. Yes it’s important to consider our fellow humans in how we dress, speak and behave generally, and some of those humans are men, and we behave differently around them than around girls or women. However, I do not believe that should be the primary focus of our hinuch l’tzniut.

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